I’d been overseas a long spell, working in journalism and public relations, when the Y2K computer bug threatened to collapse the world’s economy.  

It made me think about my heritage of blacksmiths and firemen, of cowboys and Indians ─ people who worked with their bare hands.

In the photo, that’s my strapping great-grandfather, Charles L. Moore, and his son, my grandpa, George Henry. 

Great Grandpa Charles was full blood Sac and Fox Indian by birth, and Potawatomi by marriage to full blood Rosa Lee Darling.  

They both went to the Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas, where Great Gramps learned the blacksmith trade...  

Other than war, there is nothing more traumatic, more hellish for a young man, than Two-A-Day football practices. Especially in Oklahoma's brutal August heat, like when I played at Norman High School from 1971-1973.

Back then, as a tiny Tiger, my two-a-day breakfast consisted of a big glass of Gatorade, a piece of dry toast, and two Allerest tablets. Anything more and it would have come up during wind sprints. Anything less and I would have died of heat stroke or hay fever.

I can still remember every practice starting with calisthenics, coaches screaming and whistles blasting, followed by position drills.

Dean Blevins and our other quarterbacks would put on their pink dresses and go throw to the ends, before focusing their efforts on flirting with cheerleaders…

As a public service to my fellow Okie Boomers, I offer this useful list of Okie-isms, mainly contributed by my Mom and my Dad's cousin, Sonny.

Hootis (n):  \who-tiss\

Pretty much anything.

My Dad, the shade tree mechanic, and Sonny often had this conversation while Dad was halfway under the car and his cousin was "supervising", i.e., looking down into the engine, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and offering helpful suggestions.

"Gene-o, you're messing up if you don't take off that hootis before you loosen the alternator belt. I'm just telling you."

To which my exasperated Dad would respond: "BANG (sound of his wrench slipping off a nut and bloodying his knuckles), followed by, "Take your #%&*# damn hootis and #%#&".

At which point they would break for a…

Colorado Kool-aid  (n):  call\or\add\oh\koo\laid. The beverage of choice (Coors beer) that my Dad drank by the tanker load…

We had a mimosa tree in our front yard on Nebraska Street, and half a dozen in the back. Every summer, the locusts would sing their heads off as they tried to suck them dry.

My next door neighbour, Eddie, and collected the old locust husks from the mimosa trees and fed them to Lady Dog, my beagle. She thought they were better’n pork rinds. 

We’d catch live locusts mainly at dusk. You had to be sneaky because they had those giant eyeballs.

I liked to grab their wings between my thumb and finger. Eddie would grab them with his whole hand, which I thought was insane.

I fully expected a locust to kill him dead one day, jamming its sucker spike right into a major artery and snorking out all his blood. It never happened, but I bet it could’ve.

I was probably eight or nine years old when we made our first "expedition" all the way from Norman to Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City.

If memory serves, it was a 9,000 mile journey that took about three months.I was either with Steve, or my cousins, or all of them, and possibly a sister or two.

What's clear is that we were all psyched.

For years, we had been watching Bob Jenni doing guest spots on Foreman Scotty.

Bob was always handling snakes, Gila Monsters and other critters that would kill you dead if you messed up.

I was always glued to the TV when Bob was on, quietly rooting for the snake to get loose and maybe bite somebody, just a little bit…

Somewhere along the way, my Dad found an old, lever-action Daisy BB gun. 

It didn't have much power. Even so, I'm sure Dad had trepidation about giving it to me.

But it was free, and free was good back in the day. 

So, after I promised to never shoot at birds or dogs or kids or anything glass, he gave me the BB gun.

And pretty soon, of course, I started shooting at birds and dogs and kids and glass. 

I died and went to heaven when the Ryans, our long-time family friends, bought a working farm in Tucson.

Even though vacations were only for “rich people”, somehow that summer we had enough money to go see their new Ponderosa.

Partner, from dawn to dark thirty every single day, I was doing full-on, sho'nuff, cowboy stuff, and having the time of my young life.

Early every morning, after a massive breakfast featuring a thousand pounds of bacon and a million pancakes, we were off to do chores.

Our first jobs were in a huge barn, packed with saddles and horses and pitchforks and dust and hay and lots of ropes…

Okie moms knew way more than doctors.

Bad tummy? Dry toast and flat 7 Up if you were puking. Chicken noodle soup with Saltine crackers if not.

Fever? A cool, wet washrag draped over your forehead. An aspirin hidden in a spoonful of grape jelly. And a mug of honey & lemon juice in hot water.

Stubbed toe or other pavement-related wounds? Magical and painless Mercurochrome (Monkey's Blood) if the wound wasn't too bad, but the hideous, stinging Merthiolate if it was.

Stings and bites? A touch of Campho-Phenique for mosquito bites, and a dab of bluing for nasty bee stings and ant bites...

If you grew up in Oklahoma in the Sixties, you HAD to watch the Foreman Scotty Show every day after school. It was the law.

The half-hour show featured Foreman Scotty, Xavier T. Willard, Cannonball and a whole mess of screaming kids.

If you were lucky, one day you got to be in the WKY-TV studio audience when the show was broadcast live.

If you were really, really lucky, and it was your birthday, you got to be on the show AND ride Woody.

I was exactly that lucky on my fifth birthday ─ March 15, 1961 (100% authentic invitation above).

It was the greatest day of my life, then the worst, then the greatest again, all because of Foreman Scotty himself…

It's been 60 years or so, but I still remember that ginormous Tennessee Walking Horse.

We were at my Aunt Mackie's house on West 24th, back when that was wayyy out of town. I was maybe four or five, and probably about three feet tall.

The Tennessee Walker was the biggest thing I had ever seen. It probably stood 17 hands tall but looked as big as an elephant.

I remember having to look straight up to see my cousins in the saddle. I was awestruck. And then, it got even better. Somehow, I found myself in the saddle. Like John Wayne or something.

How I got there, I will never know. Maybe a helicopter was involved…